Priceless

by Zygmunt Miloszewski

  He waited quite a while.

  “Is that it?” he finally asked. “Got any more fireworks?”

  Anatol spread his hands to say no, sorry, he didn’t.

  Hermod nodded and started walking toward him; there was no point in prolonging this. And that was when he heard the noise. A light crack. That went on and on, for several seconds, as if it would never finish, each new sound overlapping the echo of the one before, strengthening and modulating the ominous, unnatural crackling.

  But finally it stopped, and an improbable silence reigned, as if the entire valley were holding its breath.

  Just then the snow field started to quiver, and hundreds of thousands of tons of snow began to move downhill, gathering speed.

  25

  He couldn’t go with her, but he wanted to say goodbye properly, because somewhere deep down he realized that this could be their last farewell. He stood by the ambulance, holding the board with the Raphael in one hand, and Zofia’s cold fingers in the other, and despite the paramedic’s insistent look, he couldn’t force himself to let go of her.

  He heard the helicopter landing, but he didn’t see that behind him, before it had touched down, several soldiers jumped out. Two of them ran to the hotel, and two more toward him. They reached him at the exact moment when he finally let go of Zofia’s hand, the door of the ambulance closed, and it started to move.

  “Mr. Karol Boznański,” one of the soldiers stated. “The prime minister’s waiting for you.”

  Karol cursed, but set off toward the helicopter. Just then he remembered that he hadn’t told the paramedics that Zofia was allergic to barbiturates.

  He ran after the slowly moving Land Rover, caught up with it, and knocked on the passenger window. A mustachioed mountain rescue man with the look of a battle-seasoned Siberian bear hunter glanced in amazement at the madman with the big board under his arm.

  “The patient has an allergy!” he shouted, just as the soldier tugged at his elbow.

  Karol slipped on the snow, and the board painted by Raphael flew into the air. The Young Man cast a final glance at Karol, at the sun, at the bright-blue sky, and the mustachioed mountain rescue man, and then fell on the snow-covered stones.

  Right under the back wheel of the ambulance.

  As the wheels and their chains bit into the board right across the Young Man’s smile, Karol screamed as if witnessing the murder of a loved one.

  Hearing his scream, the driver braked and went into reverse.

  The wheel and chains drove over the Young Man again, or rather the remains of him.

  “What’s she allergic to?” asked the mustachioed rescue man.

  “Barbiturates,” gasped Karol, almost incapable of speech.

  The rescue man gave him an odd look, and signaled to the driver to get going.

  For a third time the wheel crushed the five-hundred-year-old antique, reducing the wooden panel to a heap of colored splinters in the snow.

  26

  Special caution must be applied on slopes facing northeast, via north, to northwest, thought Anatol.

  They didn’t suffer. As the snow raced down the hill in a surge several yards high, a mighty shock wave tore them out of their boots and tossed them like rag dolls against the wall of forest, snapping their spines like matchsticks. A split second later, when the snow tsunami tore into the forest, ripping trees up by the roots, tearing the surface off the ground and juggling boulders like ping-pong balls, their corpses were so pulverized that it took several weeks before their remains were identified with the use of DNA testing.

  A pity, because if their corpses could have been found intact, history would have recorded the fact that Major Anatol Gmitruk, who went down in Polish memory as the Officer Wishing to Remain Anonymous, entered military retirement with a smile on his face.

  27

  At the Kalatówki clearing stood an Mi-8 Polish Air Forces helicopter, a large, imposing machine that made a big impression—on everyone except Karol and Lisa.

  She had been dragged out of the hotel; he had been pulled away from the remains of the Young Man. They both walked meekly, she crushed by the weight of the secret she’d learned, he by the thought that he might never see the love of his life again. He didn’t care about the Raphael, he’d have sacrificed the contents of all the museums in the world to have her turn those maddened black eyes on him again.

  They covered the final stretch to the helicopter arm in arm, like a scene from a classic Hollywood movie—early Christians being led to their execution by the Roman soldiers.

  As Captain Clifton Patridge watched them from the open door of the helicopter, it crossed his mind that they were really pretty tough, still standing after all this. Only two weeks ago, nobody involved in this affair would have staked a dollar on them. He scanned the scene carefully, trying to spot Anatol Gmitruk. Regardless of what he’d done earlier in New Rochelle—which nobody knew about—he was afraid of this encounter. Not because he’d have to look the Pole in the eyes. But because if it had come to a confrontation, he might have had to kill him. Since yesterday he’d known what the old documents contained, and as a soldier and an intelligence officer, he understood their significance for his homeland.

  He got out of the helicopter and stood beside the Polish prime minister and members of the Polish military top brass. He was wearing an American uniform. Quite comical, that he was showing his decorations while playing the villain.

  The prime minister held out a hand to Lisa and Karol.

  “Did you look inside?”

  Karol nodded. On the way, Lisa had told him what she’d found in the briefcase.

  “Then you understand what would happen if you made these documents public?”

  “Please don’t overrate a simple black marketeer.”

  “It would disturb international balance, cause history to be rewritten, the—”

  “But please don’t talk bullshit either. I didn’t vote for you; I don’t have to listen to it.”

  The prime minister was still standing there with her hand out. Lisa still had the briefcase.

  “Please don’t be childish. We don’t want to make a scene in front of everyone.”

  Karol took the briefcase from Lisa, waited a moment, then tossed it at the prime minister’s feet. Nobody moved; the prime minister had to bend down and pick it up herself. Not even a thank you—What a Teflon-coated bitch, thought Karol.

  “And what if we tell someone?” he shouted after the prime minister as she disappeared into the helicopter.

  He got no answer, but Karol wasn’t expecting one. Without proof it was just another meaningless conspiracy theory of the kind people rant about on internet message boards.

  He turned his back on the departing helicopter and sat in the snow, facing the setting sun as it hid behind the mountains.

  The hotel looked splendid against the slope covered in snowy Christmas trees.

  Smoke rose from the chimney, and the wall of windows on the second floor shone with inviting warm light as the last tourists hovered around the building. Under the ski lift some joker had made a snowman that looked like the Easter bunny.

  Finally the sun disappeared behind the ridge. The tips of the rocks above Dry Gulley glowed red one last time and went out.

  He sighed, caught Lisa’s outstretched hand, and stood. They still had a great deal to do.

  PART FIVE

  BAD SEEDS

  The Hotel at Kalatówki

  Four weeks later

  1

  David Stammers hated walks, mountains, and nature. In New York he went everywhere on the subway or in cabs, the highest place he knew was the loft in his Brooklyn apartment building, and to him contact with nature meant vegetables in a Thai curry; his closest encounter with the wild was spotting rats in the subway.

  So he was in a furious mood as he walked between the tall spruce trees toward the hotel. The road seemed endless, his loafers kept slipping on the icy, snow-covered stones, he was sweating like a pig,
and on top of that it was getting dark; here at the ass end of civilization, even the sun set earlier.

  And David Stammers understood the sun—he never felt great here either. On the one hand, his family came from this part of Europe, so he had a strange sense of nostalgia for the place. He’d felt it one September night when he’d landed in the Polish countryside, and they’d sat out on the porch of a country cottage over a bottle of vodka. The mist had risen below the forest, everything had smelled of freshly mown grass, the crickets had chirped like mad, and yellow lights had shone in the distant houses. And for a while he’d felt a strange sense of belonging and immediately been ashamed.

  He shouldn’t feel at home in this immense graveyard, where his entire family had burned to death in the ovens at Treblinka, except for his grandfather, who’d been smart enough to get out of Europe in the 1930s.

  Finally he saw lights and reached the hotel; he stopped a while to catch his breath so he wouldn’t walk in panting like a wimp, and went upstairs. The receptionist handed him the keys to his room and told him to go to number 17 on the floor below it as soon as he was ready. He flashed her an American smile, climbed two levels higher to drop off his bag, and then immediately went back down to room 17.

  Karol Boznański was sitting in an armchair, reading a book. On the table was a thermos flask and a plate with something that looked like apple cake.

  “Coffee?” he said.

  Stammers nodded, poured himself a cup of coffee, and ate two pieces of apple cake. He was as hungry as a horse after that long walk. The apple cake tasted delicious.

  “Do you realize that this is Hans Frank’s apartment? This was his winter residence; the crazy nut used to come here to feel like he was in the Alps. Even his bathtub is still here. I thought it would be a symbolic place for us to meet. He put so much effort into screwing us all, but he ended up with a broken neck, while we can sit here eating apple cake and piss Jewish and Polish urine into his bathtub. Pretty all right, don’t you think?”

  He swallowed the last bite of apple cake.

  “I don’t know about you, but I never piss in the bathtub,” Stammers said. “Let’s get to the point. Here’s the money.” He placed an envelope on the table. “It should cover the round-trip airfare, the rail fare, the hotel in Kraków, and a night’s accommodation here.”

  Karol raised an eyebrow. “You’re my guest.”

  “I’m nobody’s fucking guest. I go where I want, sleep where I want, meet with whomever I want, and above all I write about what I want, and how I want. And I pay for everything myself. Those are my principles, and for a few years now it’s worked fine. So don’t fuck with me, Polak, just get to the point.”

  Karol smiled. “In that case there’s the coffee and apple cake too,” he said.

  Stammers dug five dollars out of his pocket and tossed it on the table. He glanced at his watch.

  “Right, let’s get down to business.”

  Karol leaned forward and picked up a manila folder from the floor containing about a hundred pages. He put it on the table.

  “These are documents from eighty years ago that were never meant to see the light of day. They were found in these mountains with a collection of Impressionist paintings, three hundred yards from here,” said Karol, pointing with a casual wave at the darkness outside. “The originals have either been destroyed or are in a safe in Washington, but we were just in time to make these copies before NATO forces caught up with us.”

  Stammers listened quietly.

  “I’ll sit here and wait. I’ll order more coffee and apple cake. You read the file, and if it interests you, come back, and we can have a chat. If not, then have a good sleep, enjoy the mountain air, and go home to New York. If you’d rather not read it, I understand that too. After all, you can’t unsee something once you’ve seen it, right?”

  The journalist didn’t drag things out. He calmly collected the file, got up, and went over to the door.

  “Why me?” he asked before leaving.

  “I wanted it to be an American. Read it and you’ll understand why. And I wanted it to be a journalist, not some little shit who tweets rumors on the internet. And several people told me you’re the last person alive who only writes about what he’s actually seen with his own eyes or heard from real, live people.”

  Stammers was expecting that sort of answer. He nodded and went back to his room.

  He didn’t look at the folder immediately. He took a shower, put on fresh clothes, called his wife, prepared a yellow notepad and some pens, stared for a while at the snowy mountains, then finally sat down at a small wooden table and slid the folder toward him.

  Why had he stalled?

  After college he’d gone back home to upstate New York, where it was closer to Montreal than any other American city that mattered. There he had taught high school English, though he was always drawn to journalism. He taught in the mornings, and in the afternoons and evenings he sat at the editorial office of the local newspaper and hoped, in between the festivals, that he’d finally have an opportunity to change the world for the better. And he did. That night it was dark and cold, and the snow was piled high, just like here and now.

  He was sitting alone, getting ready to leave the office, and had just switched off all the monitors when a guy came in. The man was over fifty, not much older than he was today, though at the time the stranger had seemed ancient. America personified—a man with gray stubble and a weary face who gave his all while instilling a sense of justice, though he certainly wasn’t rich and life had been very hard for him.

  The guy was a security guard at the town hall. He’d handed Stammers a videotape and said that if it was a problem, he could give it to someone else—after all, you can’t unsee something once you’ve seen it.

  Of course the young David Stammers had watched the tape, which showed the deputy mayor forcing himself on the Mexican cleaning woman after hours, despite her protests. He watched it, wrote an article burning with indignation, and won two awards and some fame, because the topic was taken up by the state and national media. Simple? Well, almost. The deputy mayor was his uncle; two days later David was fired from the school, his family told him to get out of the house, unknown assailants wrecked his car and smashed up his face, and until the day she died five years later, his mother never said another word to him.

  But he had no regrets. He’d done what was right; forced to leave for the city, he’d knuckled down to building a career, and now he was one of the most famous newspaper journalists in America. Except that his jaw always hurt like hell when the weather changed, right where his unknown assailants had broken it.

  Only in one interview, which he’d given a decade ago at the same school where he’d taught in those days, had he quoted that remark with the odd syntax: after all, you can’t unsee something once you’ve seen it.

  It bothered him that the Pole had investigated him to such an extent that he’d found that quote. It also bothered him that he’d used it.

  “Fuck that,” he said, interrupting his thoughts, and opened the folder.

  2

  He felt relief. Whatever David Stammers was doing now a floor above, and whatever he decided, it was no longer his problem. Right from the start, this whole business had been an American affair, and they’d just been caught up in the superpower’s wheels by accident. The documents they’d found were American too. And now they were in the hands of a man who was possibly the best journalist over there. So let him decide what to do with it. Because now Karol felt relief, and he planned to keep feeling that way, by living a regular, quiet life, and not giving a shit anymore about the exploits of the superpowers.

  3

  It was a report on closing down an intelligence operation, produced by the Office of Strategic Services—the wartime predecessor of the CIA. The document was written in 1943, and although drafted by the OSS, it was about an operation that had been initiated in the 1920s by the Department of State. That appeared logical; in those days th
e US didn’t yet have a dedicated intelligence agency.

  The operation was given the code name “Bad Seeds,” which Stammers immediately associated with Nick Cave, and even began to hum “Into My Arms” as he looked at the pages.

  At first he made notes, but when he noticed he was writing out every word, he gave up. He soon realized he had the material for a Pulitzer. Bad Seeds must have been one of the biggest and most brilliant intelligence operations ever conducted. Its scale and above all its long-term perspective were astonishing, especially in times when no government in the world would undertake an initiative whose results couldn’t possibly be seen for decades.

  The decision had been made during Wilson’s presidency. After the First World War, the United States had lots of reasons to fear new trouble in Europe. Germany humiliated, a group of new states (including Poland) battling for their place, the threat of Communist revolution. For the US, following events on the Old Continent was like reading a suspense novel—something was clearly going to erupt, the only questions were when and why. And would they be caught up in it again? And if so, could the US benefit from it? From this perspective, Operation Bad Seeds was completely logical and justified.

  It had started with the establishment of a special analytical bureau attached to the Department of State, designed to gather information from various places in Europe and write forecasts. But by the time of the Bolshevik invasion of Poland in 1920, it was plain to see that this entire bureau knew too little and too late, and that their forecasts were meaningless. Better sources were needed. And a decision had been made to create these sources by exploiting the resource provided by American immigrants. It was perfect timing. At the turn of the century, more than twenty million people had arrived at American ports on ships from Europe, and now the first bicultural generation was entering adulthood. They’d been born and raised in the US, but their parents and families were stuck in the land of their forefathers, so they’d taught their children the language and traditions of the old country. The decision was made to recruit the “seeds” from this generation—a few dozen young people, to be trained as agents and placed as young political activists in various European countries across the widest possible range of political factions. The bureau helped them advance within the power structures so that after a time they’d have access to the ideal sources of information, and also the opportunity to shape the policies of the relevant countries in Europe.